The most striking feature of this industrial city is that it looks so ordinary, but there was a time when Tangshan was pancaked by a natural disaster.
The last time China was struck by a catastrophic earthquake, in 1976, Tangshan was flattened and at least 240,000 people were killed. Survivors drank from ditches and swimming pools. They lived in crude houses _ for as long as 10 years _ built from mud and bricks salvaged from the rubble.
After last month's quake in Sichuan province, in contrast, volunteers swarmed the disaster zone amid blanket media coverage. Premier Wen Jiabao personally directed the rescue operation for the quake, which has a death toll of nearly 70,000.
Rebuilding has already begun in Sichuan, far to the southwest of Tangshan and its broad boulevards and apartment blocks. Both places now stand in vivid contrast to the secretive and suspicious China under Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong and the nation's current expansion of wealth, technology and greater political openness.
"The communication wasn't any good then. No matter how great Chairman Mao was, he never used a cell phone. Premier Zhou (Enlai) never had a beeper," said a 62-year-old survivor surnamed Zhang. "It was a different generation."
Sichuan officials say they want to rebuild communities within three years. Beijing has ordered China's richest provinces and cities to adopt hard-hit areas and send aid such as tents and drinking water, with experts in construction and city planning to follow.
In Tangshan, survivors of the earlier disaster said they crawled out of the rubble themselves and clawed through the wreckage to save others. Rescuers did not show up until several days later, and found bodies lining the streets and survivors huddled under makeshift tents and scrounging for food.
Rebuilding in Tangshan, which had a pre-quake population of about 1 million, did not begin for two years. Guo Yaochen, chief of the reconstruction command from 1978 to 1985, asked the central government for about US$1.54 billion at the time. The Ministry of Finance approved US$1.34 billion.
"It wasn't easy, the country was in a difficult time," said Guo, now 89 years old.
China was suffering through the final throes of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. It was a stricken, chaotic period when Beijing closed itself to the rest of the world. A man was considered rich if he owned four things: a watch, a bicycle, a radio and a sewing machine.
The government routinely suppressed unfavorable news, including the full extent of the 7.5 magnitude quake in Tangshan, located near Beijing. Some say the actual death toll was as high as 700,000.
Tangshan survivors look at the latest disaster and compare it favorably to what they went through. "Look at how much money people are giving _ foreign sources, domestic sources, entrepreneurs and even singers are donating money. So really they're very lucky. The people of Tangshan were just so unlucky," said Zhang.
There is a sense of pride among Tangshan survivors at what they see as the city's resilience.
"We drank water out of ditches, out of sewers, we even drank all the water in the swimming pools," said a 63-year-old man, flying a pink kite in a park in the city center.
Hearing the conversation, others nearby chimed in. "Haa! What bottled water, what noodles," said one. "We all had diarrhea," said another.
There was never an official count of those left homeless, but they lived for up to 10 years in temporary homes made from materials found in the rubble. Troops provided wood for frames, and residents used whatever bricks they could find, along with straw mats or sticks covered with mud for walls.
No one complained about the lengthy wait for proper housing. "People had nothing to compare it to, no way to gauge whether it was fast or slow," Zhang said.
To speed reconstruction, the government picked three standard blueprints, all for buildings three stories or less, Guo said. Roads were not to be widened or moved.
"Quality was the priority. The quality had to be good, but it also had to be fast," he said, noting that officials were afraid of the risk of fire breaking out in the temporary homes.
The effort to rebuild an entire city and restore services such as electricity, water, gas and heat was supposed to last five years but stretched into a decade, Guo said.
Though China now has plenty of materials and money to rebuild Sichuan, the poor transportation conditions and geography of the mountainous area will be a challenge, Guo said. Also, the planned economy of the 1970s meant a streamlined supply of cement, steel and wood _ everything came from the central government.
Tangshan is today much like other mid-sized industrial cities throughout China. Traffic clogs streets lined with restaurants, hair salons and new apartment blocks still caked with construction dust. The air is heavily polluted from the coal mines, steel plants and cement factories that form the base of the economy, which ranks 20th among all Chinese cities.
There are only a few reminders of the earthquake in this city of 3 million people: a few spots of rubble that were preserved and an earthquake memorial where people gather every year on the July 28 anniversary.
Zhang's 1 1/2-year-old daughter and wife were killed when the walls of their home collapsed. He said the reason he would not give his full name was because he did not want to upset his current wife by talking about the family that he lost.
"These are all things that happened in the past, but there are things you can never forget," he said.
